


Archaeologists Anonymous

by Jenwryn



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2007-11-12
Updated: 2007-11-11
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:00:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Artefacts from the Pegasus Galaxy turn up in Earth's Black Market and Daniel gets involved. But it's more complicated than he thought...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Doctor Göbl

**( Pergamonmuseum, Berlin, mid-Winter.)**

Doctor Haseena Göbl sat with her head bent over the artefact on her desk. She had a bright lamp and a magnifying lens, but the writing was small and she was getting a headache. She groaned, stretched, and kneaded her knuckles into the middle of her back. It wasn't as though all her professors hadn't warned her that the vast majority of an archaeologist's life was spent tucked away in museums and libraries. But still, since graduating three years ago and getting a position at the Pergamonmuseum, she had come to realise that she'd hoped nevertheless for greater things. Sunlight, for a start, would have been nice. She stood up, clicked off the lamp, and walked over to the miniscule window, heaving it up and open, and staring out into the grey world beyond while a blast of freezing air poured in. Only just above ground-level, the window hardly offered much of a view.

Daughter of a German archaeologist and a Pakistani migrant, she had grown up in exotic - and _warm_ \- places like Greece and Libya. Which was the main reason she had ignored her professors' threats about dingy offices like the one she now found herself in. Her father had been a great man, and a magnificent archaeologist of the old school - and had had the money to live his dreams. But now that money was gone, and so was he, and Haseena found herself lucky to have even this job. Still, at least she believed in what she was doing.

'Mal ehrlich, Seena, mußt du dass _unbedingt_ machen? Mir verfrieren die Ohren ab.' The plea for her to shut the window again came from the other sunlight-starved archaeologist she shared the office with. Haseena glanced at Patrizia, whose cheeks had already turned slightly pink at the sudden chill, and forced the window shut again with a squeak of stubborn hinges. Apologising, she sat down at her desk again, and bent her head back over her work.

'Du konnt'st mindestens warten, bis ich zum Essen gehe,' the blonde continued to complain, but Haseena wasn't listening any more. Her eyes were focused solely on the artefact. She had sat down at a slightly different angle and suddenly - she turned it where it lay on the desk and her heart thudded. _Another_ one!

* * *

The specific job that Haseena did in the cavern-like depths beneath the Pergamonmuseum involved inspecting artefacts that had been bought - or seized - from either private owners or the black market. It was an unfortunate fact that perhaps some of the most important pieces in existence were in the hands of dealers and owners, and the lines between legal and illegal could be easily blurred. Each country had its own rules, and the politics of it all was dangerously mixed up with the question of archaeological ethics - particularly revolving around who should get to keep what. The so-called Elgin Marbles are an infamous example, but of course there are many more. And added into the wash were the personal jealousies and arguments between individual museums, and individual universities, and individual archaeologists. Oh, it's a dirty field to work in - and that's without the actual fieldwork.

It was Haseena's job to inspect the artefacts that had been brought out of the private and criminal sphere into the academic one. Some things of course turned out to be fakes after all. Brilliant fakes, always, but fakes nonetheless. Other would be so important that whole books had to be re-written - not that she had found any so far. And so, while her office might annoy her immensely, she respected the importance of her job. But it was more than just that. For Haseena, it was a private vendetta. She fingered the small faience scarab hanging around her neck whenever she thought of it.

But it was also a job that in the last six months had brought a number of increasingly odd objects into her hands. At first she had simply tossed them into the 'clever fakes' crate that sat beneath her desk. But now she kept returning to them, looking over them, studying them. She had taken most of them home to her flat - certified as fakes that was no big issues - to peer at them by the flickering light of her kitchen fluero and an old magnifying glass. They just didn't add up. It was as though they were genuine, _die echte Artikel_, and yet if that were true then she didn't even know what to start thinking.

And now this new piece beneath her hands was another one. It was one of the types she had grown most familiar with; covered in a strange glyph that was almost Latin and yet wasn't, the object itself a sliver of metal that she knew didn't belong to any archaeological era she recognised. She glanced at Patrizia. The blonde had pushed her work aside and was doing her nails with an emery board and humming along to the sound of _Rammstein _thrumming through her iPod. Haseena dropped the piece into her carry bag and moved onto a glaringly fake Egyptian ushabti.

* * *

Four hours later she sat in the U-bahn, her laptop balanced expertly on her knees as the carriage clattered and groaned along beneath Berlin. It was a decent trip from Museeninsel to her flat, and her wireless broadband was the one and only luxury she allowed herself on her slender income. Her fingers danced deftly across the keyboard, the words appearing on her blog with such proficiency that occasionally she had to slow down to give herself time to think. The man in the seat across from her glared at her over his newspaper, annoyed by the constant _tap-tap-tap_, but she was used to that reaction, and ignored him.

'_Mein Gott,'_ she typed, in German, '_I can't believe how many of them there are or the regularity with which they keep turning up. It's as though someone very new and inexperienced has appeared on the market and doesn't recognise our methods yet - like that rash of Baltic amber we hauled two years ago. These objects, these artefacts, are so undeniably genuine, and I just don't know what to do with them. If I certify them, I'll probably loose my job because no-one would accept that I was right, and the implications of it... I continued my work on deciphering that vase last night. Part of me is sure that I have got my head around how the language works, but then, I simply can't have, because what it translates to is just impossible...' _and on she typed.

Blogs are a strange thing. Total intimacy and yet complete invisibility. She had a rather random user-name, and the contact details she'd filled in were false. And so she felt completely safe, completely anonymous, sharing this all with the world. She guessed that most people would take her for a crackpot, or a budding novelist.

She didn't realise that for two of her subscribers, nothing could be further from the truth. And as _spacemonkey01_ switched off his computer at the end of reading her latest entry, he looked up over his desk and said to the friend-and-colleague lounging nearby with a comic book and a glass of jelly, 'Mitchell, how would you fancy a trip to Berlin?'

Curiously, the other subscriber was saying much the same thing.


	2. spacemonkey01

**( Pergamonmuseum, Berlin ... a few days later.)**

Haseena turned the page in the archaeological journal she was reading, and yawned loudly. Patrizia had already gone home - she was having dinner with her fiancé's parents and wanted time to do her legs and wash her hair before he picked her up - which left her alone as one of the few people left in the building. She supposed she could go home as well, since there would be no more artefacts until the next batch arrived on Monday, but the gas in her flat had been turned off because she'd paid for her broadband instead of her heating, and so she figured she'd stay until the night porter kicked her out. Better to sit here bored, then sit there frozen.

The magazine was dull, though. She drank a mouthful of sweet, white coffee. Then she got up, found her radio amidst a pile of books, and switched it on. Turning it up a little louder than she ought, she bopped her head to it for a second, then wandered around happily and started tidying up all the miscellaneous crap that had accumulated since Patrizia had arrived. Seriously, she'd preferred sharing the office with Lukas - but he'd gone AWOL about a week before Christmas. Quite literally AWOL, not a postcard, not an email, nothing. To say that the board of administrators had been furious was an understatement. Now she shrugged a little, dumped a whole stack of pink-and-white bridal magazines in the rubbish bin, and danced to the music in that slightly-crazy way that you do when you're tidying up to the vivid beat of good music, and know nobody's watching.

Or at least, _think_ nobody's watching.

She turned in a pirouette and wobbled to a sudden stop when she found a man standing in the open doorway, hand poised to knock, and a slightly flummoxed look on his face beneath his glasses. She straightened her jumper and said with an only-slightly-embarrassed smile, 'Kann ich Ihnen helfen? Besucher dürfen nähmlich nicht hier runter.'

He met her smile and then said in fluent but awful-sounding German, ' Sind sie Frau Doktor Göbl? Ich würde sehr gern mit Ihnen sprechen.' Her grinned broadened. American. His _ich _sound like the noise you make when you step on bubblegum. 'Yes, I'm Doctor Göbl.' She went to him, and put out her hand in greeting, and noticed the visitor's pass he'd tucked loosely into his jacket pocket. Ah. So he _was _allowed to be here. But still, it was awfully late. By rights, she should already have left. 'You're lucky to catch me,' she said with another smile, then paused a little doubtfully as she realised he was vaguely familiar, 'I'm sorry, but have we met?'

He smiled humbly at her movement into English, and noticed that her accent was hard to identify. If he hadn't had her in context, he wouldn't have been sure what nationality to give her. Of course, the eastern features and thick black hair made it just that bit more difficult. 'No,' he answered to her question, 'Sorry to barge in on you like this. My name's Daniel Jackson.'

She grinned, 'No barging. As you could see, I was hardly working on the next great discovery.' Then she paused, registered the whole of his statement, and wondered how she could phrase her next question without sounding too foolish - then gave up, and asked simply, '_The _Doctor Daniel Jackson?'

He looked a little embarrassed, which made her instantly sure that she would like to know him better, and he nodded. 'Guilty as charged. I was actually wondering if you'd have a coffee with me? I'd like to discuss some of your work with you.'

She paused. _The _Daniel Jackson - and he was asking her to coffee! She'd read all the articles he'd written - who in the archaeological world hadn't? - and had always marvelled at both his gift for the subject... and his hefty funding. To be honest, he was practically of the old school like her father had been. He was the things that an archaeologist's dreams are made of!

On the other hand - she didn't know him from Adam.

Still, she nodded, stashed her laptop and journal in her carry bag, and said as she pulled on her coat, 'There's a good place a few minutes from here.' She wrapped her scarf high around her neck, and pulled a kharki-coloured beret down around her ears. She knew the cafe since she went there most days for her lunch break, and it was a well-lit route from the Island. Not that people like him would normally abduct people like her, but...

He must suddenly have realised what she was thinking, because he smiled and said, 'I promise not to kidnap you.'

Once outside he had fallen silent, and with her scarf pulled up around her face against the bitter cold she simply glanced at him curiously as they walked over the stone bridge that connected the various museums to the rest of the city. In fact, neither of them spoke again until they were seated at a table in the cafe, the light snow that had fallen on them melting in the sudden warmth. He had ordered two coffees, and then with their gloves on the table between them and their drinks in their hands, had finally spoken. 'I'm interested in the work that you do with black market artefacts.' She smiled, and sipped her coffee, 'Trust me,' she said, 'It's not all that interesting. I mean, there's the odd thing. But mostly...'

He shook his head and looked at her intently, 'I'm talking about your most recent finds. About the ones that don't add up.'

She paused mid-mouthful, put her coffee back on the table, and said, 'I'm not sure what you mean.'

He glanced at the man behind the counter as though concerned that he might be listening, and said quietly, 'I think you are. I'm talking about the artefacts that you know are genuine, but won't certify as such because you believe you'll loose your professional credibility. Trust me, I know what that feels like, I've been there.'

She pushed her chair back and went to stand up, but he grabbed her wrist and said, 'Please, Doctor Göbl, just hear me out. Think about the fact that I know what I know. Doesn't it concern you that others might as well?'

She sat back down, unwillingly, and let her coffee grow cold, 'How _can_ you know?'

'Your blog,' he said succinctly, and then added before she could protest, 'I know you used fake details. But I have some computer whiz friends who could probably get me the password to the president's email if I wanted it. Look, you just have to trust me when I say that I mean you no harm. But having those artefacts and writing about them like you've been doing might have put you into a dangerous position.'

It could _not_ have been timed any better.

As though to punctuate his words, the windows of the cafe exploded into a billion tiny fragments even as Daniel pushed her to the floor, and the bullets screamed over them.


	3. Talking To Pegasus

**(SGC, Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Utah, USA...**

**...at the same time as the last chapter.)**

Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell sat with the heels of his boots balanced on the edge of the panel in the control room, his chair rolled back so that he could slouch comfortably, and blithely ignored the pointed looks that Walter was shooting him at regular intervals. He was more than happy just sitting around and waiting for the gate to finish dialling.

General Landry had denied them permission to travel to Berlin and check up on this archaeologist chick, and so Mitchell had felt obliged turned a blind eye when Daniel took a few days personal leave and might have just _happened _to use them to go and visit her. After all, what his team did off-duty wasn't really his jurisdiction - and it wasn't as though he was going to be able to stop Jackson once he had his mind set on something.

Still, just because Landry had denied them Berlin, that didn't mean that he wasn't concerned by the implications if Pegasus Galaxy artefacts _were _turning up in Earth's black market. After all, it would mean that someone on Atlantis, and probably elsewhere, was seriously abusing their position. So he _had_ given Mitchell leave to phone-a-friend.

'Chevron eight, encoded.' The little Sergeant's voice positively brimmed with contentment.

Mitchell blinked, and watched as the whoosh of energy burst blue and impressive from gate. Truth be told, he'd never been to Atlantis and was kind of hoping it _were _all as serious as Jackson suspected, because then he might finally have his excuse.

Doctor Weir's voice came through the radio and for a moment or two she and Landry exchanged pleasantries. Then Mitchell swung his boots from the panel and rolled his chair closer to the radio when he heard the familiar sound of the archaeologist's voice, with whom he had arranged to talk. He had to smile. Somehow he suspected that if he'd never landed this job, he would never have even suspected that there were so many archaeologists out there. Not, he corrected himself, that she technically _was _one - he'd made that mistake right back when they'd met the first time and she'd practically bitten his head off. She was in reality a palaeoanthropologist and a linguist, and only temporarily Head of Atlantis' Archaeology Department.

'Hiya, Meaghan,' he said, 'How're you keeping?'

From an incalculable distance, she groaned at him happily, 'Fat as a house and if my feet swell up any more I'll probably amputate them myself. Still... I have to say I'm enjoying every minute, well, particularly since the damned morning sickness gave up. And everyone is spoiling me stupid. Not as much as they're spoiling our esteemed leader, of course!' She laughed, then continued in a more serious voice, 'But, Cameron, nice as it is to hear from you, I know it's not a social call. Elizabeth said you had an artefact problem.'

He smiled, 'Well, not me personally. But Daniel seems to think so. He's off -' Mitchell paused, and glanced at Walter who gave him one of those blank looks that said he was deaf to all mischief that SG-1 might get up to, even if they did put their boots on his panel. Still, he figured that the conversation would be monitored and decided it would be smarter to simply finish his sentence, '- off looking into it.'

'Well,' replied the palaeoanthropologist, 'You should trust Daniel's instinct in these things. I've been looking over the records since I got your message...' She paused, and seemed unwilling to talk which, he knew all too well, was for her highly unusual.

He decided not to comment but said cheerily, 'We figure it's being brought here via the _Daedalus_, rather than the stargate. You can imagine that everything coming through Cheyenne from your great city is gone over with a fine toothed comb since that looks-like-a-gerbil-but-freaks-the-hell-outa-me incident.'

She chuckled, 'No kidding.'

There was a pause, and then she said quietly and quickly, 'Look, Cam, I'm not a hundred percent sure, but there _is_ something not right about this Department. I've been at it months now, but the cataloguing system is so -- unique -- that it still confuses the billy-oh out of me. But as I've worked through it, there do seem to definitely be objects missing without certification. I'd needs a list of what you've found to make a comparison, but... I'm guessing your source is someone right here.'

'Daniel presumed it would be stuff smuggled from off-world at your end?'

'No, I think whoever is doing this,is letting our people do the hard work first.' Then she raised her voice back to a normal tone, and said, 'Hey, if there _is _something, will you fellas come out here?'

He shrugged, still trying to work out the whole tone-change thing, then remembered that she couldn't see him and said, 'Probably. I'm kinda hoping so myself. Why?'

'Oh,' she answered in a clucky voice, 'It's just that you and Daniel would make a splendid pair of godfathers.'

He laughed, 'You think? And what would your better half make of that?'

Her voice, even though the radio, was beaming, 'After I've been pregnant for this many months do you _seriously_ think he gets a say in _anything_ anymore?'

Mitchell grinned at the thought. He had nothing but respect for the woman - hell, he'd almost-sorta dated her himself a few years back - but she could be a bit of a handful. And as for that husband of hers... well, they made one hell of a pair. He just thanked his lucky stars he wasn't their neighbour.

Then her voice softened, 'Actually, he's been a real sweetheart. Everyone wants me to get knocked up again ASAP because impending fatherhood apparently agrees with him, flabbergasting as that might seem.'

He shook his head, 'Hey, how come you're still working, anyway? Don't they have maternity leave in the Pegasus Galaxy?'

She laughed, 'Technically I _am _on leave. It's just that when the Head of Department got special long-term leave after his daughter's accident, I offered to fill in. Not that I knew I was pregnant back then, but the long and the short of it is, there isn't really anyone else and it's not that much of a strain. To be honest, it's kind of fun. But now I'm starting to wonder if I've put enough hours in... You said these artefacts started turning up six months ago? Well, that's when I took over.'

'You're not trying to make a little extra on the side to kit out the nursery?' He asked with a grin. Walter glanced at him with an astonished expression, but Mitchell just shrugged. Hey, Harriman didn't know this woman like he did, and she had a wicked sense of humor.

She chuckled, 'Damn, now _why _didn't _I _think of that?'

'Well,' he said, 'Looks like I might get to come out your way after all.'

He wondered how Daniel was getting on in Berlin.


	4. In Shock

A thousand shards of glass crunched underfoot. Haseena stood up and felt a strange, throbbing pain as though _it _were in her body but _she _were not. She glanced down through her open jacket at the place where the blood had begun to seep through her shirt, and then touched it experimentally with a finger. Wet. Warm. She wondered why it didn't hurt more than it did, and supposed that she was in shock. She put her palm against the place that bled, picked up her carry bag out of habit, then stared at it in her hand and wondered why she was holding it. She slipped it over her good shoulder and tried to think what it was that she was looking for.

Doctor Jackson.

The pain had begun to throb more loudly. She glanced around for him. He had pushed her to the floor, she could remember that. She glanced at the broken windows, glass sticking up jagged from the panes, and snow blowing in. It was oddly quiet. She realised it had been a drive-by-shooting.

A drive-by-shooting. Like something from a film or someone else's life.

She jumped when a hand touched her back. It was Doctor Jackson.

His face was pale and drawn and covered in small flecks of blood. His glasses seemed slightly bent. Did she look like that?

'We have to leave,' he said, and started pushing her out of the cafe. She went obediently, then paused for a moment. There was something else. Something else she'd forgotten. She stopped and looked around.

Andreas.

Andreas who owned the cafe, who served her coffee each day.

Doctor Jackson caught her before she could go to the counter, grabbing her by the bleeding shoulder, blood on his hand when he pulled it away. 'I'm sorry,' he said, and shook his head, eyes shadowed beneath his glasses. What was he sorry about? Sorry about hurting her? She realised she'd cried out when he'd grabbed her. The throbbing of her shoulder had moved up to her temples. _A-boom, a-boom, a-boom_. 'Andreas ist hier gewesen,' she said, _Andreas was here_, her English lost in the moment.

He pushed her back in the direction of the door, 'I'm sorry, Doctor Göbl, but Andreas - that's the man who served us, right? - Andreas got hit.'

She was out of the door and standing in the full blast of the night air before his words sunk fully into her mind. 'Andreas is dead?' she asked, repeating back to him what he had already tried to tell her twice. He nodded, took her good arm, and turned her to face him. He threaded his scarf around her arm beneath her jacket, knotting it hard over her shoulder, then buttoned her thick coat up to conceal the spread of blood. 'Doctor Göbl?' He shook her slightly, 'Haseena!'

She jerked her head up and stared at him. She hadn't realised she'd been staring at his shoes until she stopped. But she had been. She'd been thinking that they needed a polish.

'What?' she asked, 'I've been shot and Andreas is dead.'

'Exactly,' said the American and put his arm around her wrist, 'And that's why I need you to be brave and do exactly what I tell you, okay?' And they started walking off down the street. Just like that. Simply walking off and leaving Andreas, and the glass, and the snow blowing in the windows.

Sirens heralded the arrival of Those Who Deal Best With Tragedy.

She realised that she'd left her gloves at the cafe and her hands were cold.

* * *

_She sits in the swing hanging from the fig tree. She's laughing, swinging herself high, her pretty new sandals shining as the red plastic glints against the sunlight. Laughing, and Mama laughs too. Seena can't see her but she knows she'll have her head thrown back and her mouth with its brown lipstick wide open, and be laughing so much that her hair flips in her eyes. And Papa is watching them from the veranda where he sits and writes and smokes and works on The Book. He says it is his Opus. She's not sure what an Opus is but knows one day she'll write one of her own. Behind the house, the ocean glimmers and the Anatolian sun sets. _

* * *

Snow and cold. Time passing.

Then bright lights and the warmth of hands.

Voices talking - all American, which makes no sense. How could she have gotten to America and not notice? Surely there had never been so many Americans in one place before. Somebody had taken her coat and her bag, and somebody else had taken her blouse. And then there were more voices, and questions that made no sense. And everywhere, always, everywhere Doctor Jackson with a worried, slightly impatient look on his face, and smiling at her when he felt her gaze.

Then the lights vanished, and only the warmth remained.

* * *

Daniel stood with his hands thrust deep in his jacket pockets and watched as the doctor at the US Air Force base removed the bullet. A nurse fussed around him, dabbing disinfectant on his face, but he brushed her away when she picked up a container of sticking plasters, and explained that he'd had much worse and was sure he'd live. She smiled, used to that type of response, and left the room. He fingered the deepest cut by his nose and then winced in sympathy as the bullet was held up for his inspection. The cut near his nose might be a new addition to his scars, but she'd have a mark to remember.

'Lucky it was a clean shot,' commented the doctor, who'd been in Iraq and knew the difference. Then he glanced at Daniel, 'Mind telling me why you insisted she be brought here? Just for a start, this base is hardly close to Berlin and the blood loss alone... And she's hardly military, and come to think of it, neither are you. Hell, she's not even an American citizen. I don't know who you phoned, but you must have friends so high up that they have to dodge the airplanes.'

There was a chuckle from the doorway, 'Oh, you have _nooo _idea.'

Daniel started, 'Mitchell?'

The Colonel stretched slightly, as though he had just walked from Utah instead of being beamed down by the _Odyssey, _and said, 'Came as soon as I heard. Landry's pretty pissed, by the way.'

The doctor glanced at Mitchell in surprise, then tossed the bullet into a metal dish with a _pinging _sound, and started cleaning the wound. Mitchell came over and inspected it himself while the doctor, now having an enlarged audience, started back up on his complaint, 'I mean, seriously, I don't know what the world's coming to when I'm stitching up civvies.'

Mitchell grinned at him, shoved his hands in the back pocket of his trousers, and said, 'Trust me, Doc, I _am _military and I'd advise you not to take this guy on. If stubbornness is a virtue, then he's Saint Daniel.'


	5. Her Father's Daughter

_It's cold and wet and she doesn't understand why they had to come here. She'd told them that she didn't understand, and they'd explained in hateful, patient voices that Papa was gone and now he needed a funeral. Explained it, like she was a baby or an idiot. But she hadn't meant that at all. She knew that Papa was gone; knew that he was dead, which was something that they wouldn't speak out loud. No, what she had meant was - why bring him here?_

_She stands and watches, her hands buried deep in her woolly jacket, as the coffin is layered slowly into the frozen soil. Papa had explained to her that the burial was the summary of a person's life. And so it makes no sense to bring him to this cold grey place and cover him in that cold grey soil. He ought be buried beneath the sun, in sand of gold, and he should have his Opus with him like a Pharaoh has his crook and flail. But they haven't given him anything. Not his matches or his cigars or even his glasses. She'd gotten angry about it, but the old woman they claim is her grandmother had slapped her and said she had a head stuffed with heathen nonsense, and that that was what came from mixed marriages and living in the past._

_Now she watches as the strangers all throw a handful of dirt on the coffin, and when nobody is looking, she drops his glasses in their case into the hole, and scuffs dirt over the top. At least now he'll won't be half-blind for all eternity._

* * *

Mitchell glanced at the woman in the hospital bed, her long black hair split out across the pillow, and lowered his voice. Sure, the doc had said she'd be knocked out for a good few hours yet, but her eyes were moving rapidly beneath their lids and he thought he'd better not push it. Besides, a nurse had come to the door, stared pointedly from the bed to themselves, and suggested acidly that if they wanted to have a domestic, they should take it outside.

Daniel had smiled at her placating, then, the moment she was out of ear-shot, had continued at a lower-volume the argument they'd been having for a good quarter of an hour. 'Seriously, Mitchell, there's no question about it. We're taking her with us.'

Cameron scratched his nose and looked frustrated, ' Jackson, I know you make a habit of collecting women, I've read all the reports. And I'll grant you that she's very pretty in a Jasmine kind of way -'

Daniel blinked.

'From _Aladdin_. Anyway, the point is, that's not enough reason for you to get to keep her.'

'Mitchell...' groaned the archaeologist, 'That's hardly -'

The Colonel held his hands up in protest before the argument could start all over again, 'Alright, _alright_ already! But you know, Landry was already in a super-foul mood when he found out that you'd come to see her. He hauled my ass over the coals something chronic. I can't guarantee you that he won't draw the line at this one. After Vala...'

Daniel grinned, knowing that he'd just about won the battle. 'You know Landry. He'll just get this beaten look and give up out of despair.'

Mitchell rolled his eyes, 'You think?'

'Look,' added Daniel, and glanced at Haseena as though to emphasise his words, 'She's already practically worked the whole thing out. And what's happened since she's met me is going to slide the final pieces into place. She _knows _that the artefacts can't be from Earth, and it doesn't take a genius to make the next step once you've accepted that. And she obviously can't stay here. The fact that we were shot at says that whoever behind this believes she's onto them, and wants to shut her up. And they're clearly playing for keeps.'

Mitchell sighed. He was trying very hard to be the responsible military officer and, as usual, in the face of Daniel's arguments wasn't succeeding very well.

Pushing home his advantage, the civilian continued, 'And don't you think she's owed something?'

Mitchell pulled a tennis ball from his jacket pocket and bounced it against the linoleum floor a few times, catching it on the rebound with a different hand each time. Then he glanced at Daniel sideways, 'You know, Jackson, if we told everyone who got in the way the whole truth and nothing but the truth - intergalactic travel, blood-sucking aliens, megalomaniac priors with funky superpowers - then half the planet would be in on the show.'

Daniel took off his glasses and passed a hand across his eyes, 'Cameron. It's not just this... Have you ever heard of Doctor Yannick Göbl?'

The tennis ball bounced a few more times. 'Not until I joined SG-1... but yeah.'

'Well, he was her father.'

Mitchell blinked, caught the tennis ball in mid-bounce and just held it for a moment, then said, 'Ouch.'

'Exactly,' replied the archaeologist, and put his glasses back on. 'I'll go order us a trip home.'

* * *

_Papa holds the scarab beetle out for her. Scarabaeus sacer, he calls it, teaching her the Latin name. It's evening and they are sitting on the steps, and Papa has picked the funny little creature gently up by one leg. He puts it in his palm, and they watch as it turns in a confused circle, wondering where the ground went. While it starts to walk up the sleeve of his jacket, he tells her the story of Chepri, the Egyptian god who rolls the sun across the sky. Then he tumbles the little beetle back down onto the soil, and tells her another story, this time about the scarab he found once near Karnak, not a live one, but small and made of faience. Then he pulls it from his pocket and holds it out to her. He has had a tiny hole drilled in one end, and threaded through a fine gold chain, and now he clips it around her neck and kisses her on the forehead, and says it will bring her luck..._

* * *

Landry was _beyond_ furious.

He'd hauled them into his office before they'd barely even gotten through security.

They'd flown direct, and taken Haseena to the infirmary. She was still doped-up under the influence of whatever it was the Doc in Germany had given her. Lam had taken one look at them and shaken her head, 'You know, the General's not going to be -' But she hadn't even had time to finish the sentence before the summons had come.

And then they had stood there, Daniel looking defiant, Mitchell looking as though he wasn't sure whether he should be conciliatory, amused, or sheepish.

Landry stood up behind his desk and shouted, 'Do you have _any _idea what you've done this time? Not only have you brought a woman who doesn't have security clearance into the SGC, but the way that you've done it technically constitutes as abduction! And you used and Air Force plane to do it, without going through the proper channels I might add, about which, Colonel, you can wipe the silly grin off your face because I _know_ you only did _that _so that you could be pilot! And to top it all off, you, Doctor Jackson, were present at the scene of a crime in Berlin - which I distinctly remember _expressly_ forbidding you as a mission - and left without advising or cooperating with the local authorities, _despite _the fact that a man had died! And don't even _start_ me on the military hospital!'

For a moment he just stared at them angrily while they waited mute beneath his onslaught, and then demanded, 'Well!? What have you got to say for yourselves?'

Mitchell shrugged slightly, 'I suppose, "it was all Daniel's idea" isn't going to cut it, right?'

Landry groaned and sunk back down into his chair. 'You're damn right it won't. What if this woman wakes up and screams blue murder?'

Daniel put his hands flat on the General's desk and said, 'That would be highly unlikely, General. I believe she had already put two and two together. And besides -' He paused.

Mitchell finished for him, 'She's Yannick Göbl's daughter, sir.'

Landry blinked.


	6. The Daedalus

Mitchell leant back lightly against a wall in the bridge on the _Daedalus _and watched Haseena with an amused grin on his face. Daniel had, as per usual, been right. Oh, there'd been a bit of a scene when she'd woken up and been faced with the unexpected prospect of finding herself on a different continent, in a military facility, with officious-looking-uniform-wearing people shoving non-disclosure agreements under her nose. But within a few hours of hearing the entire story twice through, she'd been teasing Daniel for having broken his promise not to kidnap her. It was obvious that she was an unusually adaptable woman. When Landry had come to tell them that Daniel and himself had been given the go-ahead to take the trip to Atlantis on the _Daedalus_, she'd politely introduced herself, asked what a Daedalus was, and then requested to go as well. After all, she had explained in a firm voice, it _had _been her who'd found the artefacts, and at the very least she wanted to see where they came from. Not to mention the fact that the Black Market was much more her business than it was theirs. She'd watched him with a stubborn look, hand grasping the scarab charm at her neck, and waited for his response. Astonishingly, Landry had groaned and said yes. Perhaps he thought they'd gone so far with it already that they may as well go whole-hog. And admittedly, she did seem so much more _centred _than Vala...

Now Mitchell watched her as she stood on the bridge. She had on standard SG clothes - after all, it wasn't as though she'd had anything with her except her bag and laptop - and stood with her hands pressed wonderingly against the clear wall before her, staring out at the flurry of colour that was hyperdrive. She'd been at it a good fifteen minutes now but still didn't seem to be tiring of it. In fact, the only thing that had truly thrown her thus far had been Hermiod. Mitchell had introduced her to the Asgard with a slight smirk, and he could see that she had honestly done her utmost best not to stare. She'd even made little 'yes' and 'no' noises in all the right places to show that she was listening attentively. But the moment they were out of earshot she'd glanced at him wide-eyed. He'd chuckled, beamed, and said before she could, 'I know. You expected pants.' To which she'd laughed so hard that her shoulder hurt.

Deciding he was getting bored, he walked over and tapped her on the shoulder, 'Seen your fill?'

She glanced at him, brushing a long length of black hair out of her eyes. 'It's _incredible. _To think that this has been going on for years now, and I had no idea... That I was completely and utterly oblivious to the enormous changes -'

He shrugged, 'A lot of it filters down. Don't get me wrong, I know what you mean. Compared to someone like Jackson, I'm still cutting my teeth on the Program, despite being at it for five years. But when you think about some of the leaps in technology that have been made, it kinda all adds up.'

She was still looking at the hyperdrive as though she wanted to imprint it indelibly in her mind, and then said, 'As for the whole Atlantis thing - Stephen Lawhead couldn't have got it more wrong. I mean, all this _distance_... It's actually strange to think in this day and age that there are any journeys left that take this _long_. It makes you feel like a colonist heading to Africa or Australia in the 1800s...'

He chuckled again, then took her by her good shoulder and started steering her in the direction of the door. 'Look at it this way, they made Atlantis officially a settlement a year back, and so I guess that makes it _exactly _like a colony. And now, lovely as this is, I need food. Enough staring at the pretty colours already.'

She shook her head at him, but admitted he had a point, and asked, 'Is there coffee on this tub?'

He looked scandalised, 'I wouldn't use that term around Colonel Caldwell if I were you! He might have Hermiod beam you into a distant sun...'

She rolled her eyes. _'Please_. They showed me pictures of this thing. Just because it does the job doesn't mean they had to leave it this ugly. Haven't you Americans ever heard of aesthetics? Even just a lick of paint...'

* * *

A week later, Daniel sat with his head bent over a pile of inventories, while Haseena scrolled her hand along the ball-mouse of a laptop. They had already decided - as Mitchell had explained to Meaghan - that the smuggling simply _had _to be happening via the _Daedalus. _The only other option was that somebody else was running spaceships back and forth between the two planets, which was just too disturbing to even enter into. And so they were trying to spot something - well, multiple somethings really - in the records that would give them a clue as to what was going on.

'You know,' said Cameron laconically, glancing up at them over the palace he was building from a few packs of playing cards at the other end of the table, 'There's no reason to presume that anyone on the _Daedalus _is involved at all. I mean, not consciously. If someone who outranks you tells you to unload a particular package away from the rest, you're not always gunna think too hard about it.'

The archaeologists looked at him.

He shrugged, 'All I'm saying is that the magic link in the chain you're so busy trying to find might not exist. Sure, someone in Atlantis has to be in on the game, that's a given. But most of the people on this ship are military and they've been trained to do what they're told. Come to think of it, so have most of the civilians, more or less.'

Haseena slanted her head to the left. 'You're saying that if a superior officer gave you an odd packet every time the _Daedalus _headed to Earth, and told you to off-load it secretly, you wouldn't find that a little suspicious?'

'Well...' Mitchell's fingers fumbled, and the palace collapsed splendidly, cards sliding smoothly off the table and scattering willy-nilly all over the floor. He muttered a few choice words that his grandma would have smacked him around the ears for, then got down on his haunches to start gathering them back up again, saying, 'Well, what if the officer said it was just a little something for the missus?'

For a moment there was only the sound of his boots scuffing along the floor, and the sliding that the cards made as he collected the final few. Then he stood, and banged them into square against the table.

'I don't suppose the packages could have been beamed off?' Asked the German suddenly.

Daniel smiled wryly, 'I already thought of that.'

'And?'

'And so I asked Hermiod.'

Mitchell snorted at the thought, started laying the foundations of a new card palace, and asked, 'Oh yeah? And what did he say to that?'

'He informed me that he was politely curious to know whether I was implying that he was involved in an intergalactic conspiracy to smuggle scribbles left by the Ancients onto Earth, and did I think someone else could do it without him knowing?'

'I take it that was a no.'

'It was a most resounding no.'

Silence again, just the soft hush-hush of cards. They all seemed inexplicably interested in the development of Mitchell's construction. Then suddenly, 'Maybe we're going about this the wrong way.'

The two men looked at Haseena, and she shrugged. 'Well, we want to know if someone on board this ship is consciously involved in smuggling, yes? If there is such a person, maybe we should just let them come to us. After all, chasing them is only going to make them run.'

'And how do you propose we do that?' enquired Daniel.

Mitchell sat up so straight that the cards collapsed again, and exclaimed, 'We tell them that we've already found out who's doing it! The old we-know-who-you-are trick! Works every time in the movies.'

Daniel shook his head, 'You and Teal'c, honestly...'


	8. Smuggler Bait

_She stands in shock, stock still, the sun beating down on her bare head with such force that she gets little silver spots in front of her eyes. She's completely forgotten about her hat, holds it limply in her hand, arrested in the middle of putting it on. Mama would scold her, tell her she's a sweet honey colour but not if she leaves her hat off._

_But she can't make her hand move._

_All she can do is stand, and let the sun pound her, and stare at the man. The man stands and stares right back. Then he waves his gun at her slightly, and says something to his companion. She doesn't understand a word of it, but she can remember every single syllable, and years later can translate them even in her sleep -_

_'Hey, man, nobody said nothing about no kids.'_

* * *

Haseena's eyes burst open. She didn't know what had woken her. It hadn't been the dream, because even half-asleep she knew all too well that the dream didn't end there. She and it had been companions for much too long to be mistaken about that. No, it hadn't been the dream.

Maybe she had heard the door slide open with a soft hiss, because now, as she lay there, eyes staring in the dark at the wall beside her bunk, she heard it hiss shut again with a soft sucking noise.

It had been Mitchell who had made the comments at dinner - Mitchell who had implied in an arrogant tone that he had 'cottoned on' to what was happening. But she had known, deep down amongst her entrails, that it would be her they would target. She was to blame for drawing the SGC's attention to the artefacts. She had no doubt that if there were a smuggler aboard the ship he would have been in contact with whoever had shot her in Berlin. She was to blame. And - she was the outsider - the woman - the vulnerable one.

Or not. Beneath her pillow, her fingers curled around the nunchaku concealed there. Her body consciously softened itself, relaxed, worked out the knots in her muscles, melted her limbs into liquid, working in the opposite direction from her instinctive urge to clench stiff.

She knew it was a man. She could hear it in the breathing, hear it in the sound of how he walked. Hear it in the way he opened the bag of clothes she'd been given by the SGC, and poked around inside. What was he doing? Couldn't he tell by _her _breathing that she was awake? Her eyes stared at the blank wall. Now she could hear him flicking through a pile of papers. It took all her self-control to stay laying loosely between the sheets. Perhaps he would simply leave. There was no reason to cause more drama than was necessary. A camera had been set up inside each of their quarters - they would know who it was.

But the moment his hand, clammy and calloused, touched her bare shoulder and she heard him mutter something to himself in amusement, she couldn't take it any longer. She let out a cry like a banshee and swung her body up and out and around. The man never knew what hit him as she leapt for him in the dark. He was bigger and stronger than she was, and there was no doubt that his military reflexes were way better than hers, and that if they'd met in a bar fight he'd have demolished her -

But it wasn't a bar fight, and she and her nunchaku had taken him completely by surprise.

By the time Mitchell appeared at a run from his quarters next door, he was met with the sight of her standing there, chest heaving, and a hand pressed to her shoulder beneath a standard-issue singlet.

He blinked, switched on the light, and said simply, 'Wo.'

Daniel appeared a few seconds later, took in the unconscious man at her feet and the weapon in her hand, and asked curiously, 'How'd you get them to let you bring that on board?'

She glanced at it and grinned slightly, 'The Lieutenant who checked my bag was impossibly young. I'm not sure she knew what it was, wrapped up in cloth with it's little tub of camellia oil, but she was too embarrassed to ask.'

'You're kidding? And here we are, wondering how the smuggling's been happening...' Then he paused, and glanced at her sideways, 'And you just happened to have that thing in your regular bag that you tote to work each day? A laptop, a copy of _Antiquity_, and a numchuka?'

'A _nunchaku_. Well. Technically a _san-setsu-kon nunchaku._'

He smiled slightly, 'You know, that thing looks evil. They should make it illegal.'

'They have.'

Mitchell, meanwhile, was still marvelling at the fact that the slight woman in front of him had done _that_. He grinned suddenly, 'You know, I'm really gunna have to stop underestimating you archaeologist people. Woman, consider yourself on my official list of 'do-not-piss-off' people.' He glanced at Daniel and added, 'I mean look at that guy, man. She beat the crap out of him!'

'She' grimaced slightly. 'Yeah, well I think I pulled out some of my stitches.'

* * *

Lieutenant Burke sat in the brig and scowled at Daniel from a bruised face. He'd been having a lousy twenty-four hours. First, he'd been beaten up by that slip of an archaeologist woman - how the hell was he supposed to know that she was armed and dangerous? And then now, to rub salt in the wound, they'd sent _another _archaeologist to interrogate him. It was demeaning, and it was offensive. He crossed his arms over his chest, pressed his mouth into a hard narrow line, and glared at Daniel.

Daniel just looked at him. 'You know we'll find out who you're working for eventually,' he said quietly, 'I don't know why you're bothering to protect them.'

Burke sneered, 'You think you're so damn good with all your little letters behind your name, don't you? But you know what, the guy I work for is just as smart as you. You can search this ship upside down and inside out and you won't find nothing. And you've got no way to make me talk. I know my rights.'

Daniel smiled pleasantly. 'I wouldn't push me, if I were you, Lieutenant Burke. The whole Geneva Convention thing gets a little hazy about the status of prisoners in space ships, you know...'


	9. Atlantis

If the _Daedalus_ had been incredible, it still had nothing on the city of Atlantis. They had arrived early in the Lantean morning hours and had been beamed down into a large room where the sun was veritably pouring in through a set of stained glass windows. Or at least, Haseena presumed that they were made of glass. It was hard to accept that she was on a different planet, let alone in a different galaxy. Windows could be made of anything here.

With Daniel at her side, she took a step closer towards the windows and for a moment ignored everything else, and simply gazed at the city spread out beneath her. The city and, beyond that, the ocean. Her heart caught at the sight. She hadn't been to the ocean, hadn't seen such an expanse of water since her father... Daniel must have read something of her thoughts in her eyes, because he glanced at her with a curious expression and said, ‘It's beautiful, isn't it?'

She was saved from making anything resembling an answer by the arrival of a very red-haired, very short, and very pregnant woman; the temporary Head of the Archaeology Department. ‘Daniel! Cameron!' she crowed and then wrapped both men, one after the other, in enthusiastic bear hugs which - given her current girth - was no mean feat, and left Daniel in particular looking a little shell-shocked. Mitchell, on the other hand, laughed and said, ‘Whoa, girl! Look at you!' and then held her at arm's length with a smile before patting her fraternally on the head and inquiring, ‘How's the daddy holding up?'

The woman grinned wickedly. ‘Charming as usual. But you know, like I said on the radio, he really has domesticated at an amazing rate. I've suspected for quite a while that fatherhood secretly agrees with him. You should try it sometime.' And she winked in the direction of Haseena at the slightly-trapped-male look that darted onto his face. Haseena, who up until then had been standing silently in the awkward way that you do when other people are catching up with their old friends, stuck her hand out in tentative greeting and asked, ‘Doctor?'

Meaghan smiled. ‘So they tell me. Although, I'm starting to think that PhDs are as common as coffee around here and they're going to have to think up some kind of super-doctorate to keep the competitive juices running. But call me Meaghan. It's simpler that way - means my husband doesn't have to think about which one of us is being summoned when the surname comes over the radio. And you, on the other hand, must be Doctor Göbl.' She paused just long enough for Haseena to nod, and then continued, ‘Can I call you Haseena? I'm in a gorgeous mood, it's the hormones I suppose, but I simply couldn't bear any more suity formality this today. It's bad enough that I had to sit in on a meeting with Caldwell earlier this morning. Really. The man stalks around the city like it were his long lost inheritance and he's always got that look on his face, the _I-am-military-I-am-superior _one. No offence meant, Cameron.'

Mitchell raised his hands, ‘Hey, none taken. The words that come out of your mouth are thank God none of _my_ business, Meg.'

She grinned and motioned them all out of the room and into a much narrower corridor, speaking ten-to-the-dozen over her shoulder as she led the way. ‘I'll give you the grand tour of the Archaeology Department, if you want. You ought be impressed. We finally got a decent share of the funding this year and it's all state of the art now. The best the Milky Way and the Pegasus Galaxies can offer.' She nodded in particular at Daniel. ‘There's been a lot more focus on civilian research since Atlantis was officially changed in status from an expedition to a settlement, but you'd know that, right?'

Daniel half-nodded in confirmation and kept the confusion from showing on his face. He _did _know that the funding allocations had been altered - after all, he'd been a member of the advising committee to the funds board during the status change. But he'd also read the exact figures and, to his knowledge, this year the Archaeology Department had if anything received _less _than normal. Most of the money had been channelled into medical developments. But he said nothing, just glanced at Mitchell in such a way for his friend to know that something wasn't right, and then continued to listen to Meaghan chatter.

Haseena, on the other hand, was barely listening at all. Everywhere she looked she seemed to spot something interesting. Probably it was psychological, she guessed that - deep down, after all, it wasn't _that _much different from what she was used to. But the whole fact of _where _this city was, of _what _this city was, seemed to cast a sort of magical aura over it all. This was the origin of her unexplainable artefacts. From here, from this galaxy.

Meaghan must have noticed how otherwise preoccupied Haseena was, because when they reached the Department itself, and Mitchell and the German went inside, she stayed at the door, caught Daniel's arm and asked quietly, ‘Do you trust her? I mean, she's not in on it, is she? A sort of backwards double-cross thingamubummy? I heard about what happened on the _Daedalus_. I've met the man that she beat up. I'm not saying that heisn't involved - I never liked him all that much and the fact that he won't help your investigation doesn't exactly endear him to me - but how could a girl like her beat up a bloke like that? It would be like me attacking - er - Ronon or Teal'c - and winning. Which wouldn't happen in a month of Sundays.'

Daniel half-smiled. ‘I was there, I know how she did it. It's just been a bit hushed up because of the, um, instrument she used. Look, Meaghan, she's one of the victims in all this. It's more complicated than you know.' He glanced through the door at the dark girl wandering around with the Colonel, and added softly, ‘Her father was once - involved - in something that interested the US government. It all comes back to the Stargate Program.'

The Australian looked baffled. ‘But in the dossier I was sent on her, it said that her father died in the early eighties. She was almost ten years old already and she's not _that _young. The Stargate Program has only been running since you joined it, what? A bit more than a decade ago?'

He shook his head. ‘Technically the Program was already active, though not _successfully_ as regards gate-travel, before I joined it. And it has an even longer history than that. Once, before -' he broke off as her radio crackled and the voice of one of her colleagues came through. She stood and listened for a second then said apologetically, ‘Duty calls. Have dinner with us tonight, and we'll finish the conversation then. The records you'll be needing are on file in the main database. I've ear-marked all the anomalies I've found since Cam and I spoke.' And with a smile, she hurried off.

* * *

Haseena stood in the middle of the main room of the Department and turned in a slow circle. Work benches, individual desk nooks, and a myriad of technical devices - some familiar and some most decidedly not - filled the room. Scattered all amongst them, in varying states of condition and antiquity, sometimes bound with string or embellished with paper labels, were artefacts. Hundreds of artefacts. Artefacts, and some of them were just like those she had in a cardboard box beneath her kitchen table back on Earth.

It was an archaeologist's dream - the chance to discover something genuinely, utterly _unknown_. A dream that had been largely out of reach for years now on Earth, on the whole. But not here. Here, the golden age of exploration was well and truly in full swing, that was obvious.

Restraining her itching desire to pick up every item in the room and examine it, she instead pulled herself together and, turning to Mitchell and Daniel, who had just come over to join them, asked, ‘This Meaghan, the temporary Head of Department, do you trust her?'

Daniel grinned slightly at being asked the same question is such close succession, and nodded.

She looked doubtful. ‘But isn't it strange that the artefacts should start showing up just when she took over the job? After the proper Head of Department left? And isn't it a bit unusual that that she's still working at this stage in her pregnancy? Why do they let her stay?'

‘Do you mean stay in the job, or stay in Atlantis?' Mitchell asked, and shrugged at her, ‘The fact is, Atlantis isn't so strictly military any more and you don't _automatically _get packed off him for having babies. Having said that, even if it were the case, they can't afford to loose her husband's brains, though for the love of God don't tell him I said that. Besides, Meg always did make her own rules.' He picked up a clay pot, went to toss it into his other hand, but then saw the expressions on the archaeologists' faces and put it down rapidly.

Daniel continued to give him a disapproving look for a second, and then finished, ‘Either way, I trust her. But you have a point about the timing. Look at it from another angle - isn't it strange that the Head takes leave and immediately things hit the Black Market?'

‘That's exactly what I just _said_,' she protested in astonishment.

He nodded infuriatingly. ‘I know. Even stranger, though, is that funding she mentioned - it didn't come from Earth. Or at least, not from an official program. Whoever has poured cash into this Department has done it of his or her own accord, and for their own reasons kept silent about it. I think it's high time we had a look at this Doctor Addamson and the leave he took, don't you? I don't know why we didn't do that in the first place.'


	10. Ingenuity

"What do you mean, the man's gone AWOL?" John Sheppard rubbed the back of his neck and looked slightly irritated. "How can someone go AWOL when he's on leave? The whole point is that you can go wherever you want to, Mitchell."

They'd already spoken to Doctor Weir and she'd sent them to her CO.

Mitchell shrugged, "Hey, I understand that you don't like what you're hearing. All your people are important to you, I know, I get it. But the fact is, he was supposed to be on Earth visiting his daughter and he isn't. But he's not in Atlantis, either."

A shadow crossed Sheppard's face and he sighed. "Look, I don't know the guy personally, but I asked around after Elizabeth radioed me to say you were coming. Apparently he was good at his job and kept himself to himself, so much so that nobody even realised he'd never turned up. He was supposed to travel with the _Daedalus_, of course. I checked with Caldwell and you're right - he never got on the ship. Maybe he just got sick of it around here and wanted a break. Maybe he dialled out and went to some Hawaiian beach planet instead. I know I've been tempted."

Haseena and Daniel exchanged a look, and then Daniel put a disk onto the desk in front of him. "I wish that were the case. I don't know what Doctor Weir told you on the radio, Colonel Sheppard, but... you'll want to look at this."

Sheppard glanced at it a little bemused and then put it into the laptop in front of him. He waited for the right program to come up, then pressed _play_. The images only ran for a few minutes, and then he pressed _play_ a second time and watched it over. Finally, he looked up. "I see Doctor Addamson dialling out. It's like I thought. He went exploring. All you have to do is get one of the nerds in the tech department to tell you which address it was he dialled and you've got him - presuming he stayed put, of course."

Mitchell looked sympathetically at him and shook his head, "That's just it. We already did. And the gate he dialled? It wasn't in the Pegasus Galaxy."

"_What_?"

"The gate he dialled was in the Milky Way. Now, I know that you haven't got the power here to be dialling that far at the drop of a hat, but if you watch the video closely, you'll see that before he dials out, he fiddles with something there. Doctor McKay believes that he must have had some kind of device, unknown to us, that enabled him to make that journey. They're going through his office at the moment, but - it's the only time we have him on film, and he has a rather large amount of luggage with him, so... I'm guessing we found our smuggler."

"Hang on, but, wouldn't someone have noticed what he was doing?"

"He was a Head of Department - I suppose he just said he had permission. Doctor Weir is looking into that aspect of it."

Sheppard rubbed his neck again. "So, where did he go? Earth? I'm pretty sure that someone would have noticed that at the SGC."

Daniel leant across the table. "That's the really big problem. He _did _dial Earth. But not Cheyenne Mountain. Someone has a second gate."

There was a moment of silence. Haseena, who knew little about stargates, couldn't understand the expression that appeared on Sheppard's face. He looked at each of them in turn, then said in a careful voice, "But that's not possible, is it? I mean, isn't there some rule about the proximity of stargates? Too close and they start playing up? So wouldn't we end up in that gate sometimes too? I mean, not us personally, seeing as how we can't, but anyone else trying to dial the SGC?"

"We asked Doctor McKay about that too," answered Daniel, and hefted a long-winded report onto the desk. "Basically his answer was _'yes, in theory'_ and _'in practice what do I know, if the guy has the ability to travel that long a distance, maybe he and his friends have the technology to solve the gate proximity problem too.'_"

Sheppard shook his head, "If someone has that kind of technology, why would they be wasting it on petty smuggling? Why not go for world domination and be done with it?"

Finally it was Haseena's turn to speak. "But it's not petty at all, Colonel Sheppard. If you look at the list of missing artefacts, you will discover that the ones I've found on the market are mostly there for prettiness or antiquity. But there are a number of objects, quite a large number in fact, that haven't turned up on the market. Now, maybe they've just gone to private buyers. But I don't think so. Because the one thing they all have in common is that they were used as offensive weapons in the past. We presume they aren't currently functional, but -"

"But someone's doing some weapons research."

Daniel, Mitchell, and Haseena all nodded. "Exactly. And we're going to have a massive problem on our hands if they're successful."

* * *

_She stares at the man and the man stares at her._

_"Hey, nobody said nothing about no kids." He glances nervously in the direction of his companion and his voice has a whiny tone to it._

_The companion turns and for a moment appears confused. Then his face hardens as he takes in the sight of her standing there trembling, sun pouring down on her head, and her hand clutched at her scarab necklace. She's never seen an expression as cruel as his, and yet somehow she barely sees it at all, is too busy staring at the weapon in his hand, is too busy staring at the crumpled lump at his feet. She tries to understand and yet she already understands it all to well._

_The hard faced man steps carelessly over the motionless lump on the sandy soil and says in a casual voice, "Well, don't just stand there, Larson. You know the procedure." _

_Like a doll on strings, her feet are jerked from the ground as the first man nods and picks her up effortlessly by one shoulder and carries her towards his companion and the crumpled lump._

* * *

"Seena, are you alright?" A light blinked on against her eyes, dazing her for a moment, but then she blinked and nodded half-heartedly at Daniel Jackson. She must have fallen asleep at her desk.

He looked worried, "You were, um, sort of -"

She sat up properly and shrugged away his concern. "Just a bad dream. I think I need to get some proper bed sleep. We've been staring at this stuff every day for a week now. I'm no scientist, Daniel. I don't know if you understand any of this, but it could be written in Swahili for all I'd know. So this Doctor Addamson did something impossible -" she yawned loudly, put her hand over her mouth, then finished, "I would have thought that you'd be used to the impossible, with your job."

He smiled wryly, "I know. But it still gets me every time. You're right, though, it is scientist babble. We'd be better off with Sam here than me. Still, going on the plans and the notes that Addamson left in his office safe, McKay thinks he's reproduced the first device - the one that will let us go back to Earth through the stargate rather than waiting for the _Daedalus_ to pick us up. It's made the men in suits so happy that they've decided they're not upset about you being here anymore. And you can go home."

"I can - what? Go home? Just like that?"

He didn't realise that it was anger in her voice rather than surprise, and continued, "Yes. Landry has said you'll be given protection until we get to the bottom of all this, and then -"

She stared at him. "Under no circumstances! There are weapons smugglers out to get me, and you think I'm going home? Besides, I've probably lost my job by now. I know how it works at the museum. There are graduates just lining up to work there. They won't even look for me, they'll just replace me, I-"

Daniel held up his hand, "Hold on. What makes you say that?"

"Lukas - he was my colleague - he went off around Christmas and nobody cared. And the policesaid he was a grown man and had the right to leave without telling anyone."

There was a pause. "Christmas? And he - he wasn't working on these artefacts too, was he?"

The expression on her face when she realised the implications of his words answered his question with a loud yes. He shook his head, "Fine. You can stay with us for the moment. But I really don't know where we go from here. It should have been as obvious to us as the noses on our faces that there was a second gate. The fact that we never realised..."

He paused, and for no reason she could understand, asked abruptly, "Haseena, do you know _exactly _what your father was working on when he died?"


	11. His Opus

What exactly was her father working on before he died?

Haseena looked at Daniel from shadowed eyes and then brushed a stray strand of hair away from her face. "Archaeology, as always. Me and my mother and thousand year old people, we were what populated his world. You know, we were in the East at the time. In hindsight, I think he'd probably been warned against going. It was a dangerous year - but then, when isn't it a dangerous year somewhere on Earth? And he'd had that dig planned for so long. It was part of his research for his opus." She half-smiled at the word, "That was what he'd told me. That it would hand him the final pieces of the puzzle. He said it would make me proud." To Daniel, her eyes seemed to be looking inwards rather than at him. She finished in a bitter tone, "But no, I couldn't tell you exactly what he was studying. I was only small. And for all these years I've searched amongst what belongs of his we still have, and I have never found a notebook nor a single scrap of paper relating to it." Daniel made a sympathetic noise, and she focussed back upon him suddenly, as though remembering he were there, and asked, "Why do you want to know?"

A series of conflicting emotions passed over his face and then he turned around, picked up a large cardboard box from the darkness of the table behind him, and placed it in front of her. It sat there on her desk and she looked at it silently, then looked at Daniel. The box had the words DR. Y. GOEBEL stamped across it, and was marked US AIR FORCE - RESTRICTED ACCESS- CONFIDENTIAL. Haseena put her hands out towards it, but couldn't touch it. "Daniel..."

He frowned slightly. "You have to understand that you were never supposed to know. This isn't the only box; there are five. It wasn't me who made the decision, that was before my time. But I _am _making this one. I asked the box to be put on the _Daedalus_ with us before we left Earth, but I was waiting for the right moment, and then with the mess en route, it slipped my mind. I'm sorry. But if you're going to help us, then this is the least I can do in return."

He pushed the box a little closer to her and left the room.

* * *

Paper. So much paper, and almost all of it filled with her father's clear, careful handwriting.

Haseena had always presumed, deep down, that his work had vanished at his death; been taken by _them _when it had happened. The sight of it here in a box marked _US Air Force_ was almost too much for her. What could her father have had to do with the American military? Her family were from West Germany, but that hadn't meant he was enamoured with America, there was too much water under the bridge. He wouldn't, couldn't, have been working for them...

Her thoughts struggled and failed to make sense of themselves, and all the while they raced unchecked, she leafed through the pages of his writing as reverently as if they were some lost gospel. The notes weren't in the careful order that she would have expected from him. And someone had been writing pencil comments, in English, down the edge of the margins here and there. Words had been circled or underlined. Now and then there was a dashed translation. Haseena ignored them, feeling their presence to be an invasion of her father's mind, and just read random pages of his work, or a paragraph here and there when it caught her eye. Until she found what she was looking for. A book, leather bound, and apparently as yet untouched by the English note taker.

His journal.

She opened it gingerly and childish letters - her own handwriting as it had once been - met her eyes_. Lieber Papa, viel glück zum Geburtstag, deiner Seena_; dear Dad, have a happy birthday... She'd saved her pocket money for months to buy this book.

With her eyes blurring slightly behind a film of tears, she leafed through the pages slowly and traced all the cases where her name was written.

_Today Haseena has assisted me at the dig. Of course, it's play for her more than anything else. But I never cease to be amazed at the attention span one so young can apply to dusting rocks with a small brush... _

_It's lunch break and I can hear Seena singing with one of the local worker's wives. Gerald keeps grumbling about the noise but I haven't the heart to interrupt them..._

_I must remember to write my mother a letter and apologise for Haseena's behaviour last time we saw her. She was really a right horror child_...

She could have happily spent the next few hours just reading about herself through her father's eyes, when a phrase at the end of a page caught her eye.

_Himmelstor. _Gate to Heaven.

She stopped, turned back to the page and re-read it. Gate to Heaven. Almost instinctively, like someone trying to shield herself from danger, she wanted to ignore it and just keep reading about herself as a child. But the words had stuck in her mind. Why would the military have his paperwork? What was he studying in his opus that would interest them? Gate to Heaven. She'd seen a gate to the heavens just recently, down in the Atlantis gateroom.

No. It wasn't possible.

_If it is true that the Gate was of such symbolic value to so many cultures around the globe, I have to wonder if the origins of this concept come from one specific area. So much comes from here in the East. If I could just trace it beyond H... I know it ended up somewhere here. But how? Why? Of course, I believe so fervently that what I am searching for exists, but Gerald laughs at me. He says that H. was full of ridiculous ideas. That H. believed at one time that the Earth might actually be hollow and that we are inside it, so he could bounce weapons off the sky, so to speak, and hit England. I don't know about those stories, they sound a little farfetched even for me. But the Gate, the Gate is there in so much of our history and so I can't help but feel... damn N._

H? N? A trickle of cold excitement ran through Haseena and she placed the journal down on the table, and returned, with trembling hands, to the pencil inscribed notes. Half of the encircled words were in some way connected with gates, doors, portals... Her father had been tracking a significant artefact that he had believed was of universal symbolic importance, an artefact that had been dug up in Italy in the mid 1700s. A Gate to Heaven.

She picked up the radio that Mitchell had given her and contacted Daniel. "Doctor Jackson, I have to ask you, who was researching these notes?"

His voice was muffled and she wondered suddenly if she'd woken him. Probably. According to her watch, when she glanced at it guiltily, she'd been reading for hours.

"Um, Catherine Langford. Her father was the one who discovered the first stargate."

"In Italy?"

"What? No. In Egypt, in the 1920s."

Haseena shook her head at him, forgetting he couldn't see her, then said, "No, he didn't. The man who discovered the firststargate was a German archaeologist with the initials W.H. I don't know why there are only ever initials but - Daniel, why didn't this Catherine woman ever tell anyone this, if you don't know it?"

He paused, and she could hear the sound of sheets and clothes rustling. "Maybe she only got to that box just before she died. She had thousands of documents from her father's collection, and more she'd collected herself. Half of it is military information that she borrowed and simply never got around to giving back. I inherited it when she passed away a few years ago and haven't had time to even scratch the surface of it all." There was another pause. "Are you saying a stargate was found in Italy?"

"Yes. By this W.H. person. Etruscan, it was, or at least, it was found in an Etruscan site. Maybe it was brought there during the sixth century BC, I don't know, my father always knew what he's talking about in his notes so he can be infuriatingly vague. But it would make sense. Lots of the Mediterranean went Egyptian, Assyrian, Eastern crazy during the sixth century and imported all sorts of things. It wsa the fashion. On the other hand, the stargate might have been there for much longer and - but you know all that. The point is, it was an undocumented find. Archaeology didn't really start to find it's feet in an organised sense till the 1800s. And then N came and took it."

"N? Napoleon?"

"That's what I guessed. Took everything attractive he could, why not a stargate? My father lost track of it in the intervening years, but then it surfaces again with H - I'm presuming Hitler - who is supposed to have gotten his hands on it during the Second World War. At that point, my father loses it in the records again, and he couldn't find it again. But he seems convinced that it wasn't in Germany any more. I don't know why were in the East that time, Daniel, but maybe he thought he'd found a clue there... Daniel - does that mean this could be our second gate?"

She could almost hear the smile in his voice, "Thank God for Catherine Langford."


End file.
